It would seem possible to celebrate all sorts of new years. But I guess it is a little like the problems of standards, how many can you have and still call them standard? It is however some sort of consolation that if you seem to get stuck with a particularily obdurate year, you can jump to another reckoning of time, start over with a clean slate and get another totally unused year, be it 2009, 1427, etc. etc.

* As for the Gregorian Calender Sweden has a curious history. Sweden decided to make a gradual change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. By dropping every leap year from 1700 through 1740 the eleven superfluous days would be omitted and from 1 Mar 1740 they would be in sync with the Gregorian calendar. (But in the meantime they would be in sync with nobody!)

So 1700 (which should have been a leap year in the Julian calendar) was not a leap year in Sweden. However, by mistake 1704 and 1708 became leap years. This left Sweden out of synchronisation with both the Julian and the Gregorian world, so they decided to go ‘back’ to the Julian calendar. In order to do this, they inserted an extra day in 1712, making that year a double leap year! So in 1712, February had 30 days in Sweden.

Later, in 1753, Sweden changed to the Gregorian calendar by dropping 11 days like everyone else.

For more history on attempts at measuring the unmeasurable and further ideas on more onedimensional descriptions of time I highly recommend this link: